34 HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY. [1643. 



hand of savage cruelty. The affidavit of Dame Catelina Tricho, 

 before given, establishes the fact that on at least one occasion, 

 four females accompanied their husbands to Fort Nassau ; but as 

 the fort was soon abandoned, and only occupied occasionally up 

 to the arrival of Printz, their residence here could only have 

 been temporary. 



There is also some evidence that the colony at Christina did 

 not consist exclusively of the male sex. The Rev. Reorus 

 Torkillus, the Swedish priest, who accompanied Minuit, we are 

 informed by Campanius,^ took a wife there, by whom he had one 

 child previous to his death on the 23rd of February, 1643. It is 

 not to be supposed that Mrs. Torkillus was the sole representa- 

 tive of her sex in that colony; nor would it be reasonable. to con- 

 clude, that the colony of Jost De Bogardt, had omitted to intro- 

 duce an item so necessary to its prosperity and permanency. 

 Still the number of European females on the river, prior to the 

 arrival of Governor Printz, must have been very few, and even 

 with the addition brought by him, the number must have been 

 disproportionately small compared with the other sex. 



Tobacco and maize, and probably beans, were Indian produc- 

 tions of the river prior to the arrival of the Dutch or Swedes. 

 Wheat, rye and buckwheat, with a number of garden vegetables, 

 had become articles of culture at this period. But the immigrant 

 settlers had none of the luxuries, and but few of the comforts of 

 civilized life. Where woman was so nearly excluded, but few 

 could feel that they had a home even in name. 



In respect to religious matters on the river, there is nothing on 

 record, except that the Rev. Mr. Torkillus officiated as clergyman 

 at a church built within the walls of Fort Christina up to the 

 period of his death. 



The river is generally spoken of as healthful; but it would ap- 

 pear that great sickness and mortality prevailed among the set- 

 tlers in 1642. Wiuthrop^ attributes the dissolution of the 

 English "plantation," that is, the settlement at Salem creek, to 

 the sickness that prevailed that year. He says, "the same sick- 

 ness and mortality befell the Swedes settled on the same river." 

 The despondency, with which the early colonists were usually 

 seized, was well calculated to increase the mortality of any serious 

 disease that might happen to prevail. 



Up to this period, notwithstanding the repeated sales of large 

 tracts of land that had been made to the Dutch and SAvedes by 

 the Indians, the country remained substantially one unbroken 

 forest, and was almost as much in possession of the savages, as 

 when Cornelis Mey first sailed up the river. They had received 

 but little compensation for their lands, but as yet, they had the 



1 Page 107. '^ Winthrop's Journal, ii. 76. 



